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Saturday, 10 June 2017

Election gamble blows up in the face of British PM Theresa May. Or how settling for an insecure coalition cabinet with a stronger opposition could become a blessing in disguise for the UK as a whole.

British Prime Minister Theresa May of the conservative Tory
party had it all figured out: with the extremely tough Brexit negotiations with
the European Union ahead and with the Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, seemingly
flat on its back, it seemed like an appropriate time to organize national
elections in the United Kingdom.

According to her plan, these national elections would act like
a two-edged sword. When she would indeed
have the sound victory based upon an absolutely majority that she anticipated,
she would acquire a stronger mandate with respect to the EU negotiations and it
would also rub her adversary Jeremy Corbyn deeper in the dirt of his own
incompetence, she figured.

With the Tories as absolute majority leaders in parliament
and Labour lying in tatters, she would be energized to take the tough stance
against the EU that she deemed necessary to carry out the best possible results
from these negotiations.

Things went... a little different:

The Tories won the elections by a small and non-decisive
majority of 58 seats (319 seats against
261 for Labour, according to the latest polls) and they saw Labour gain a quite
impressive 29 seats, in comparison with the last elections.

When one takes into consideration that Labour under the
“clumsey leader” Corbyn seemed a lost cause and that May seemed on her way to a landslide
victory only a few weeks ago, it is clear that things went horribly wrong for
Theresa May.

And the remarkable thing is that neither the Brexit nor the terrible
terrorist attacks of the last few months in the United Kingdom seemed the
direct smoking gun, with respect to this strongly disappointing election
result.

The terrorist attacks – terribly brutal and vicious as they
were – were of course condemned by all parties and it was not that the policy
of either the Tories or Labour would have led to a different outcome. Besides
that, all three attacks (i.e. the two in London and the one in Manchester) were
executed by people living in the UK for a long time or even all their lives, so
even the most restrictive policy regarding immigration would not have stopped
these terrorist attacks at all.

To put it even stronger: the perpetrators were perhaps all
part of the United Kingdom’s colonial heritage and not a consequence of the
unhindered immigration of the recent years.

And the Brexit was not even the elephant in the room in the
prelude to the elections. As Bernard Hammelburg, the savvy Dutch correspondent
for Foreign Affairs of BNR Radio stated (if I recall him correctly): “the
Brexit itself as an event hardly played a role in the British elections. The
Brexit was a thing from the past, upon which all the important, gamechanging decisions were
already taken. It was especially the unclear economic outlook and the feeling
that not all would be hunky dory within the British empire after all, that
drove the people – especially the youngsters – towards Corbyn’s Labour party”.

Whatever the reason was: fact is that the whole plan of
Theresa May to improve her position via these elections blew up in her face.

Instead of having an absolute majority of at least 326
seats, she ended somewhere south of 320 seats. In order to find a workable
majority directly after the elections, May called in the help of a Northern
Irish splinter group: the Unionist Democratic Party. This party is far more
populist and conservative than even the Tories would like to endorse.
Nevertheless, calling in the help of this party seemed the only way in which
she could continue her governmental plans at short notice.

This means that due to this UDP party participation her
hands could be tied with respect to all kinds of political hot potatoes, like
the Brexit (the difficult choice between a soft and hard Brexit), the open border with Ireland, immigration and the
economic development in all the countries within the United Kingdom.

And on top of that she seems to have lost the confidence of
many youngsters in the UK, in favour of Labour with its leader that initially “nobody
wanted” and that really nobody among the powers-that-be took serious in the
beginning.

Corbyn was considered a basket case, with a totally outdated
political view that came straight from the Eighties of last century: a political Catweazle[Catweazle
was the name of a fictious wizard from medieval times, who was transported to
the 20th Century by a failed spell – EL].

But the tides have turned for both PM
Theresa and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn...

So what can Theresa May do, now it is probably not possible
to maintain her tough stance against the EU (i.e. “a Brexit on our terms or
else... no deal!”), as she is now stuck somewhere between the desires of a now very
powerful Northern Irish splinter group, a strongly divided Tory party and a
Jeremy Corbyn with much more power than before and with the momentum going his
way?

Perhaps the best solution would be to grind off the sharp
edges of her current Brexit-related policy by diluting it here and there with a
dash of mildness and a spoon of compromise and humility. She knows that she has
to take three totally different opinions into account (Labour, Tories and UDP) in
order to get anything through the parliament in the coming years.

She can’t
always trust the hardliners within her own party for automatically voting in
her favour, so she must be able to find a broader compromise than she did
before.

In other words, she has to take Labour’s desires also into
account to a certain degree and stick out a hand towards the man that she
probably dislikes more than anyone else: Jeremy Corbyn. Will she be able to do
that? Who knows?!

I think the best she can do, is creating a compromise that nobody loves, but nobody hates
either. A compromise that is in the best traditions of Dutch politics with its outrageous
number of (small) parties and its long, long history of coalition cabinets,
that were always a difficult marriage between sense and emotion.

And probably, when Theresa May grinds off the sharp edges of
her Brexit policy, the EU is also willing to abandon their plans to punish the UK for
trying to leave the EU.

The toughest nut to crack will be the immigration issue, as
well as the free traffic of capital, citizens and goods and services. However,
even in these formerly non-negotiable areas of EU policy there might be a small opening.

Immigration already has turned into
the hottest potato within the EU itself and the member states are already
discovering that unlimited free traffic of citizens (i.e labour) has a series of serious drawbacks that cannot simply be ignored by the powers that be.

Politicians start slowly to discover that the EU citizens
become more and more fed up by the EU’s neoliberal policy of the last thirty years,
because it largely ignored the sense of security and financial / economic stability that almost
every citizen requires, in order to have a decent living and raise a family in relative prosperity. That could mean a chance for the UK in the coming
negotiations.

However, the most important factor will be whether Theresa May
is able to sing a different tune or not? Will she be able to show the EU
negotiators a little more humility than before, when she made it seem that she
held all the cards and the EU leadership had to sing to her tune in the Brexit
negotiations.

Even though the UK is still very much a stronghold in the
financial and commercial services industry and not all financial companies are
automatically choosing to leave London after the Brexit, May must understand
that the UK still needs the EU more than the EU needs the UK after the Brexit. It is
simple as that.

The UK is in my opinion quite vulnerable in the areas of
agriculture, manufacturing and heavy industry, as well as the exports of manufactured
goods, as the island cannot and will not be self-supporting in the coming
years.

In some industrial areas, like the steel industry, the
country still suffers from obsolete and hopelessly inefficient plants, that are
no match for the cunning and efficient German industries or the heavily subsidized Chinese
industries with their dumping of steel and other semifinished products. And
nobody can eat or drink financial services alone.

So finding a viable and feasible compromise in the prelude
to the Brexit can be a lifesaver for the UK in the end. The decision to start
the Brexit can probably not be withdrawn without a massive British loss of face,
but the way that it happens is very much in the capable (?) hands of PM Theresa
May.

And then, this outcome of the elections, even though
it will be a tough lump to swallow, could be a blessing in disguise: both for
Theresa May and for the United Kingdom as a whole. And they can be a good chance for the EU to show a more friendly and humane face as well. A British mandate that takes the
interests of more people into account is probably a better mandate in the end.

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About me

Hi, I am Ernst Labruyère. I live in The Netherlands with my wife Olga and my three children.
I blog on the Dutch, European and worldwide economies.
I try to bring you the interesting newsfacts and insights.
Besides doing photography and playing my electric guitar, I'd like to drive to my work with my racing bicycle. Saving the environment and getting rid of some pounds. I hope you enjoy this blog. Please let me know: @orbeaernie on twitter or ealabruyere@gmail.com